Lord of Riva wrote:
That said a review Embargo is actually a good thing since it assures that reviewers dont rush as they have a set time frame to play and write the review. Having an Embargo until release date though makes it impossible for customers to make themselves a picture of what is sold, this should clearly be criticized.

WTF?

How does release day embargo make it impossible for customer to be informed about what is being sold? Do they have a gun to your head, forcing you to preorder? Brian Fargo shows up to your house and hits you on the head with a stick until you put the game in your Steam basket?

You can just wait for reviews. Those normal customers you're so worried about? That's what they do, they wait for reviews and make a decision

If you can't control your shopping urges, and have to, have to, have to, have to preoder because there's some stupidass monkey pet or some other pointless digital bonus, that's your own problem , and not the developers being evil because they had a review embargo. Give me a break.

IHaveHugeNick wrote:If you can't control your shopping urges, and have to, have to, have to, have to preoder because there's some stupidass monkey pet or some other pointless digital bonus, that's your own problem , and not the developers being evil because they had a review embargo. Give me a break.

It's not a pointless bonus, it's a special suit of armor with huge stat boosts in a game that doesn't have a difficulty slider and has very little armor variety. It's one of the best pre-order bonuses I've ever seen.

Oh, and GOG gives you Lords of Xulima for free on top of that. What's the last time you got a free game for pre-ordering?

IHaveHugeNick wrote:If you can't control your shopping urges, and have to, have to, have to, have to preoder because there's some stupidass monkey pet or some other pointless digital bonus, that's your own problem , and not the developers being evil because they had a review embargo. Give me a break.

It's not a pointless bonus, it's a special suit of armor with huge stat boosts in a game that doesn't have a difficulty slider and has very little armor variety. It's one of the best pre-order bonuses I've ever seen.

Oh, and GOG gives you Lords of Xulima for free on top of that. What's the last time you got a free game for pre-ordering?

I got XCOM for free when I pre-ordered BioShock: Infinite. The former mostly made up for the latter!

Neither of the things you mentioned interest me, but I can understand where you are coming from.

Serjo wrote:
It's not a pointless bonus, it's a special suit of armor with huge stat boosts in a game that doesn't have a difficulty slider and has very little armor variety. It's one of the best pre-order bonuses I've ever seen.

Oh, and GOG gives you Lords of Xulima for free on top of that. What's the last time you got a free game for pre-ordering?

So? Does that mean they are using mind control? Are InXile taking over your brain and making you click buttons in a shop? No, each time you buy something, that's your decision and yours alone. A child can make excuses that they couldn't control their emotions, but this is +18 rated game so children shouldn't be playing it. So what's your excuse?

Seriously, it's embarrassment to even read grown men whining how a shiny digital bonus makes them unable to make a well reasoned purchasing decision. Take some god damn responsibility for yourself.

Serjo wrote:
It's not a pointless bonus, it's a special suit of armor with huge stat boosts in a game that doesn't have a difficulty slider and has very little armor variety. It's one of the best pre-order bonuses I've ever seen.

Oh, and GOG gives you Lords of Xulima for free on top of that. What's the last time you got a free game for pre-ordering?

So? Does that mean they are using mind control? Are InXile taking over your brain and making you click buttons in a shop? No, each time you buy something, that's your decision and yours alone. A child can make excuses that they couldn't control their emotions, but this is +18 rated game so children shouldn't be playing it. So what's your excuse?

Seriously, it's embarrassment to even read grown men whining how a shiny digital bonus makes them unable to make a well reasoned purchasing decision. Take some god damn responsibility for yourself.

If you believe that manipulation through advertisements is not a thing then you are simply wrong.
The Pre-order incentives and advertisements are there to stop you to wait and make an educated decision. Its exactly why they exist.

So to make them fair reviews have to be made before the Pre-order bonus is not available anymore.
You know, outside of the USA a lot more people believe in different things than a Dog eats Dog world (this also does not make me a communist) and this is clearly a consumer protection issue.

Well what do. You know. The first reviews aren't too glowing. Can't wait to see what happens tomorrow. It's almost like review embargos only benefit the publisher to secure early sales without the critics getting to warn people thus allowing them to crank on meh to bad games and rake in the cash.

They say hope begins in the dark, but most just flail around in the blackness...searching for their destiny. The darkness... for me... is where I shine. - Riddick

- bad graphics even when compared to other "revival" Games; terrible character animations and poses, sterile atmosphere
- character and combat system are serviceable, but no more than that
- main story is predetermined and quest solutions are "nothing new" (reviewer warns not to believe "marketing speak" here)
- stats are badly balanced, too much power given to Intelligence chars

Pretty much what i thought while avoiding the beta and getting little snippets, the character models and animations especially are dreadful. Game looks lacklustre outside of the story/quests in every department, and each review has mentioned how good that story can be so hopefully its enough to make up for the rest. At the end of the day thats what i play these games for, even if the other ingredients do help.

- bad graphics even when compared to other "revival" Games; terrible character animations and poses, sterile atmosphere
- character and combat system are serviceable, but no more than that
- main story is predetermined and quest solutions are "nothing new" (reviewer warns not to believe "marketing speak" here)
- stats are badly balanced, too much power given to Intelligence chars

Pretty much what i thought while avoiding the beta and getting little snippets, the character models and animations especially are dreadful. Game looks lacklustre outside of the story/quests in every department, and each review has mentioned how good that story can be so hopefully its enough to make up for the rest. At the end of the day thats what i play these games for, even if the other ingredients do help.

Anyone know how moddable the game is?

Really true for the intellect char there is 80 % of the quest who use int char i was nano so no problem with 20 int pool

In terms of dialogue, the writing is superb, evocative and ranges from lighthearted sci-fi jokes to a terrifying dissection of existence itself. And it’s a good job, too. There’s a lot to read and Torment expects the player to visualise all the intricately written and structured descriptions it uses. This isn’t a game where you rush through text to get to a fight.

The less good:

Torment uses a skill-check system in almost every section of the game. Each character has a number of might, speed and intellect points which you can use to ensure you succeed in persuading someone in conversation or to increase your chances to hit in combat. Companions can help with skill checks, which gives Torment a similar feeling to tabletop D&D games.

While it’s an interesting system, it’s tempting to hoard skill points and avoid situations where you might want to spend them in case you run out later. During my playthrough, I ignored many early conversations because I’d run out of intellect (make your own jokes) and if there were any skill checks during the chat I knew I’d fail them. I could revisit most of these conversations later, but it felt counter-intuitive to ignore a gigantic mutant banging against a cage or a howling mob in front of a public execution because I had no points left and didn’t want to risk failing a check. It’s fairly easy to get skill points back outside of combat, you just need to find an inn and sleep, but that means ignoring a fun situation or backing out of a conversation, running to an inn, sleeping and then coming back.

Summary:

Torment is designed to be replayed, you can’t fit 6bn years into one play-through and expect to see everything. The sheer mass of stories and lore is impressive, and with less focus on combat, you can build characters that are designed for exploration and dialogue instead. The game is less a hunt for fights and gear and more a philosophical journey into what identity truly means. This is an intriguing, altogether different approach to storytelling. Torment: Tides of Numenera is more than a nostalgic homage to Planescape: Torment – its own innovations will mark the genre as much as its spiritual predecessor did.

The Sixth Axis gives 5/10, calling the game "fundamentally broken on consoles."

What’s Good:

The lore and world are interesting
The Bloom is a really unique location
A load of quests have good stories
Battle system is decent

What’s Bad:

Framerate drops and stuttering
A number of crashes and freezing
Opposing characters are slow in battle
The Last Castoff’s voicework is poor

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a game whose plot, with its well written characters and plentiful twists and turns, could easily hook you in. However, it’s a game that is currently fundamentally broken on consoles. Despite the technical flaws, the plot definitely grew on me and it would be great for others to be able to experience it, as well as the world they’ve created, but until the game is fixed on a number of fronts, Torment: Tides of Numenera is hard to recommend.

Very rich world and setting, ripe for use in other games, preferrably not with "Torment" in their title or similar pretenders' claims.
A few, tragically too few moments in the Bloom, speak of the game that may have been, back in 2013.

- ΑΡΝΗΤΙΚΑ

This is not Torment by any stretch of the imagination. Just comparing itself to the 1999 masterpiece, is anathema.

Extremely poor audio-visual presentation, even by indie game standards. For a 4.5 million dollar Kickstarter, this is a disgrace.

In spite of its rich world and lore, it utterly fails to create an emotional connection with the player or make us care about anything going on in the Last Castoff's story.

RPG mechanisms, character development, inventory acquisition and management are at amateur levels.

Meres and their sad, sad implementation. It would have been preferable to save some face and not include them at all.

The bitter aftertaste in players' mouths, that this was merely a tech demo for selling the Numenera world to prospective publishers for future projects. There is no game here.

The silently cut stretch goals of the Kickstarter campaign. In light of the project's extremely poor quality, the argument of "We wanted to focus on polish" seems even weaker. High tier backers should be furious.